Just like riding a bicycle

I've been a little under the weather lately (sinus and ear infection) so instead of helping my pals put on a bike event, I laid around the house all weekend. Well, a guy can only do so much of that so in between snoozes I did a little baking.  I made my first two loaves of plain old SD this fall.

They came out OKish. I have some work to do on the crumb,

but the crust, flavor, and of course the aroma were good to great. Too bad I didn’t down load that @smell app, you’d be drooling on your keyboard. I also made another batch of SD English muffins.



I was really winging it this time, whole different recipe and I included a bunch of seeds and grains in the making.  



I used half AP flour and half 9-grain flour.  I really liked them, and as I made my ronds among the neighbors, floks were all smiles.  I'll be interested to hear what kind of reception these get.  I put together my own mix of seeds and grains: rolled rye flakes, flax seed, hulled millet, sunflour chips, black sesame, and poppy seeds. 

 

I also made a loaf of KAF Harvest Grains Bread.  

 

It came out heavy, but I just let it rise and rise and it was pretty good, but still heavier than I like.

 

I remembered my steps pretty well until Sunday AM when I made a mistake: I took both of my SD loaves out of the refrigerator at the same time. The Batard came out just right but, because the Boule had to wait longer for its date with the baking stone it was of course over proofed and did not have the oven spring it would have if I had waited an hour or so to take it out of the refer. Could have been worse and the neighbors have grade school kids, little eating machines and they were happy to have it and a bag of English muffins too.

In the late aftenoon sun slanting through the kitchen window, these loaves reminded me of the bakeries in the little villages of France

 

The fish swarmed me when I came out in the rain to have a look.